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IF YOURE NOT GETTING UNFOLLOWED, YOURE NOT

SAYING ANYTHING

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Every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end, but
not necessarily in that order, and the best ones start in
medias res. In an age when popularity is everything, to
be unfollowed is against the current. To say a true and
beautiful thing and someone hit that unfollow button is
the most counter-culture you can be right now. The
unfollow button is now the counter-culture symbol.

This isnt an overview of a whos who of pop culture,


theres a hundred extra names I could have included,
but what causes and changes the energy in pop culture.
I originally tried to make this in to a documentary film
out of archive footage but it makes so many
comparative references that it just looked like a scene
from A Clockwork Orange.

* * *

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UNFOLLOWED

At the beginning of the 20th Century Paris was the


capital of culture, by the end it was New York City. The
First World War had scattered artists from Paris around
Europe and America. Although the entire history of the
20th Century can be retold by no other single city than
Berlin, the history of popular culture belonged to Britain
and America. The foundations for a new musical culture
was being set by black artists Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley,
and Little Richard to name just a few. The music of jazz
and blues popularised during the 1920s and 1930s
made popular through dizzying live performances and
was being distributed to new generations ears through
radio. Radio meant listeners got a collision of country,
jazz, swing, and blues, and black and white music
together. Yet the traditional social mores were still
apparent in the family and society, and crooning was
still the preferred music on the mainstream audience.
But that was all about to change. On December 10th
1953, the first colour television sets went on sale just in
time for Christmas. On March 1st 1954 the United States
of America deployed Castle Bravo nuclear test that
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exploded 2.5 times larger than expected. Twenty-three
men on a fishing vessels were contaminated by the
fallout. Unevacuated islanders suffered radiation
sickness. That same year on July 19th 1954 Elvis Presley
released his first single Thats Alright. People sat
around a colour television set, watching the nuclear
explosion, to the sounds of Elvis Presley. Suddenly this
was a new world.

1957 Jack Kerouac publishes On The Road and reads a


newspaper after its publication and gets to say those
famous lines of Lord Byron "I woke up and I was
famous." Ideas of reckless freedom from the
conformism of the city sweeps across America.

1961 Bob Dylan gives his first live radio performance in


New York and releases his self-titled debut the
following year. 1964 The Beatles perform their first live
show. And ever since young boys began to grow their
hair long, the idea of counter culture was testing what
people could handle and finding those limits. In the 60s
boys grew their hair long, in the 70s girls shaved their
hair off.

1965 Bob Dylan performs at Newport Folk Festival


where he shuns his acoustic guitar and goes electric,
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but not to an electrified audience expecting a folk guitar,
and their voices can be heard booing whilst he plays.
That same year Dylan earns a hit song with Like A
Rolling Stone. 1965 some other Rolling Stones go to
Number 1 with I Cant Get No Satisfaction, whilst raising
the awareness of the contribution that black music had
made to rock and roll. 1967 the Velvet Underground
and The Doors both release their self-titled albums.

In 1967 a new era of Hollywood appeared with the


release of Bonnie and Clyde and New Hollywood was
born.

In the 60s everything was experimental. No one really


knew what they were doing it, they just believed in it
and got on with it. But theres no hiding the importance
that drugs would always have on the impact of popular
culture. From the LSD of the 1960s, to the heroin of the
1970s, to the cocaine of the 1980s, to the ecstasy of the
1990s, and marijuana throughout the whole thing.

In the 70s, a real business method for rock music took


shape. In Britain the punk scene exploded, but it didnt
take off in America until much later and without the
raw aggression of British punk. Punk was an raw anxiety
right in to music giving a voice to the working class. The
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rock and roll of The Beatles, Rolling Stones, David Bowie,
everyone came out of art school. Although the music
carried the ethos of the 60s, rock music had become big
money. It was the era of tour buses, private jets and big
wooden studios. Every aspect of rock was phallic.
Eventually even punk bands were playing sell out
arenas singing about poverty. Concerts were huge and
elaborate like theatrical shows. The shows were as big
as the money.

When John Lennon was shot by a fan in 1981 the whole


spirit of the 60s and 70s died. The practices of the 70s
split in to two directions between the bigger the better
side of the 70s and the down to earth political and
social voice of the 70s. The mainstream was where the
money was. Greed was good, the bigger is better ethos
landed on heavy metal, pop, and glam rock. Brands paid
artists huge money to sell their products. In the 60s and
70s radio existed simply to advertise records. The
unification of advertising and art came out of the 80s,
when brands sponsored artists like Madonna, Michael
Jackson, and George Michael. Now suddenly you've got
the Rolling Stones advertising for Budweiser because
the kids who listened to them in the 70s are grown up
and buying beer. Radio began to play only radio friendly
music. In cinema, the 80s was the decade of the
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blockbuster movie, beginning with Jaws and the pop
movie soundtrack where pop music was used instead of
an original score for the film.

Of course not forgetting through his time, the creation


of MTV in 1981. At first they had only 66 music videos,
22 of which were Rod Stewart. The major label bands
were experimenting with music video, at first crude
experiments of live performances, wherever they
werent they were surreal and dadaist. Duran Duran
began making more feature film like videos. In an
interview in 1983 David Bowie rightly accused MTV of
not playing black artists. After fighting for MTV play a
young black artist got a video on for a song called Billie
Jean. Michael Jackson later changed the whole idea of
music video with his video for Thriller. Not only did this
bring the ensemble dance with the pop star principle
dancer in to a major part of music video but also
narrative video that exploded in to the 1990s famously
with Madonna Like A Prayer, Meat Loaf I Would Do
Anything For Love, Aerosmith Janie's Got A Gun, Puff
Daddys Victory among many others. On the
underground the down to earth reality lived on in new
wave, post punk, hardcore, hip-hop and the stripped
down folk of R.E.M. By the mid-80s the culture was
gaining a global conscience, AIDS was public concern,
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poverty and education of Africa. Live Aid became a
political collaboration with music concert and songs to
raise awareness and charitable finance. Whilst at the
same time the underground artists that radio werent
playing were getting air time with videos on MTV. From
this they were selling records competitive to radio
played major label artists and making it to the number
one spot. By the end of the 80s the underground bands
were bought up by major labels.

In 1989 The Berlin Wall was demolished, the Soviet


Union fell in 1991, the British labour government and
American democrats come in to power and a new sense
of freedom and individual personal power came over
the culture. George Michael released Freedom in 1990.
The 1990s was to became a homogenising of all of the
past in to one. The indivisibility between art and
advertising. Commercials and music videos looked like
feature films and CDs were released in packaging like
antiquarian books, rock posters like vintage art nouveau
memorabilia. A music with the power and ecstasy of the
70s and 80s undercurrent fused with the club culture
that took the world. Every form of music had its place
side by side at once. There was no single overbearing
genre. Each one applauding the other. Rock had dance
beats, dance had classical, hip hop had rock. By the end
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of the decade every genre was fusing with other genres
that journalists would find it hard to pigeon hole
anyone.

In to the 90s art and advertisement was seemingly


indivisible. Budding film directors getting their starts in
career doing music videos and commercials. Music
videos and commercials were indivisible from feature
films and appreciated like works of art in themselves.
Films and adverts featured pop music. Pop music video
made by film and commercial directors. This continued
to be apparent right up today when a musician does a
photoshoot they now expect it (and we expect it) to
look like a fashion billboard. The indivisibility between
artist and advertising was very 90s.

But at the same time, the news began to blame popular


culture as an explanation of a perceived break down in
society. No change in laws of gun control but Marilyn
Manson gets blamed for influencing the Columbine high
school shooting despite that millions of other people
also listened to the same records without taking any
similar action. Tarantino was also used to blame for
violence in society, despite that he argued that
Japanese cinema is the most violent cinema and yet the
most peaceful society. And throughout a nearly thirty
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year career was given that same question. Its evident
that Tarantino makes some of the least violent action
films. For instance, in a Hollywood action film it's not
uncommon that the hero will burst into a room and
murder hundreds of men single handedly. And the
director will make it seem like this is a very good thing
and that the hero is amazing for doing it. In the course
of killing a hundred people the hero might get a scratch
and it will seem like an equal act of retaliation. At least
in a Tarantino film when someone dies it matters. And
we have a new feeling about the character for having
killed someone. We have a sort of moral reflection
about them. Not only that, we're also made aware of
the consequence of it, and we don't necessarily feel
satisfied by it because we invest ourselves in to all of
Tarantino's characters as there's no real bad guy. It's
not this bland Good versus Evil story where so long as
it's been imprinted in our mind that they're Evil it's
justifiable that they've killed someone. There's never an
evil character, someone who acts contemptuously
perhaps, but not evil. If there's a bad guy we like - well
that's on us. Its a story construction perhaps borrowed
from Eastern story-telling. The difference is we actually
care when someone dies in a Tarantino films because
even the bad guys are good guys to us. If it feels more
violent its because, unlike mainstream Hollywood, we
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realise and feel that violence is violent. We see the
consequences of violence, which is something Akira
Kurasowka is also very notable for. And whats more
Tarantino makes use of music during violence that
makes us aware that we are watching a movie which
distances from emotional participation in violence that
film scoring creates, which turns violent drama in to
music so that we feel the violence.

The 1980s was a kind of mezzanine between the 70s


and 90s. The 1970s perhaps produced the great artists
of the popular culture, bringing the intelligence and the
avant-garde from the art world in to popular culture as
artists. But the 1990s was the triumph of popular
culture itself - when it was no longer counter-culture,
but culture itself. Blurring the lines from the
mainstream industrial dance rock music of the early 90s
to William Orbit producing some of the best rock and
pop records from Blur to Madonna. And in 1998 Bjorks
Homogenic fusing classical music with club beats in a
ways that didnt feel overlayed like samples or
antagonistic but as if out of the same soul, that there
was no difference between the origin of these kinds of
music. And the fact that electronic music originally
came out of classical musicians says it all. Whilst at the
same time resembling music that was pre-Classical that
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was full of instrumental percussion and dance. In the
end its all just music. Everything was colliding with each
other beautifully.

What was so exciting about 1999-2001 was that in the


best of it there was beginning to be no major difference
between pop culture and high art. An age when Aphex
Twin was playing clubs, airing controversial videos on
MTV, whilst also performing with renowned composers
like Philip Glass, and having classical symphony
orchestras reinterpret his work. The 21st century had
two ways to go. Either there was no difference between
high art and pop culture or there was no difference
between advertising and pop culture. Whilst artists
from the 1960s became revered as founding fathers,
artists from the 1970s became relevant again, and
those artists who survived the 1980s only got better in
the 90s. But that was all about to change.

The events of the 1989 and 1990s made people feel


they were stronger, freer, above their problems and
situations. The ecstasy of the 1990s, its idea of a new
birth of freedom couldn't continue to wave its flag in
the wake of something as dreadful and devastating as
what was about to happen. And if it had done so, it
would have been a great insult. Pop culture couldnt go
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on in the same way after that. Although it may be
exactly what people needed to lift their spirits, it wasnt
the time, and it wasnt in our hearts. It needed time to
respect those lost, and those thousands of families that
had lost loved ones. And the West was looking at a new
uncertain future.

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On September 11th 2001, the Twin Towers in New York
City were hit by two hijacked airplanes. Nearly 3,000
people died. No sound of music. People around the
world watched the planes explode in to the buildings on
colour television sets in horror and silence. The once
tone of individual power over circumstances, a rockstar
attitude to life, was shattered. The world was a living
reality, itself as chaotic as the pop culture.

People became increasingly wary and confused by the


world around them. The overwhelming amount of
information pouring out the news of devastation every
day made young people feel lost, powerless and
hopeless in a chaotic world. Since 2001, people felt
increasingly overwhelmed by the world. And the
information overload made people feel subdued by an
inevitability of disasters, by its events and messages.
And arose a state of mind that held a perspective of the
world which placed them once more beneath their
world. And a feeling of powerlessness creeped in again.
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If there's one thing that has devastating effect on
culture it's war. So why didn't the Vietnam war have the
same effect on pop culture that the First World War
had on Paris and the Iraq War had on New York? Simple:
it didn't take place on home turf. War changes the tone
in the streets, the homes, the work place of people.
And a bleak silence took hold after 2001.

Even things down to the Eastern influences faded out.


The Hong Kong film influence, the influence of
Hinduism, Buddhism that influenced films and music
disappears because of a refocused attention to
traditional Western Abrahamic faiths. Now the conflict
between the Abrahamic faiths preoccuupies culture. In
a large sense it was a return to the 1950s with a 21st
century face.

The era that we live in now is a world that seemingly


moves so quickly we live in a world that we don't
understand. As the costume of the age changes there is
a sense of alienation from ones own life. We also have
is a generation of people growing up where this speed
of change is so normal, they demand change. They get
bored with stability, they're constantly needing the next.
A restless culture used to a culture on demand.
Therefore they have little patience for substance,
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everything is about the transient appeal, the beauty of
something in the moment, and whatever is appealing.
Culture has as much appeal as a single moment of their
lives, a day of their lives, a year of their lives. There is no
actual culture which defines the times, any more than a
day or a year which defines a life.

The culture began to reflect it in its bleak and vacuous


nature. Rock music became sad. The wave of emo
music, post-rock, indie became quiet, solemn and
depressed, and its found a voice across the melancholic
streams on Tumblr. The minimalism design and
architecture to the popularity of music of Fennesz, Alva
Noto, and Tim Hecker who borrowed from 70s
minimalism of Brian Eno, William Basinski, Philip Glass,
Steve Reich and Terry Riley. Tim Heckers (2001) The
Work Of Art In The Age Of Cultural Over Production was
almost the real sound of that time set back from
everything that was going on, as if you were able to
watch it all from a distance on fast forward. Its hard to
believe that's the direction music took considering that
Bjork just released Vespertine and Radiohead just
released Kid A. The most successful American
alternative rock band of the 1990s, The Smashing
Pumpkins, after they broke up in 2001 sent 5 copies of
an unreleased vinyl to 5 fans they knew had the ability
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to copy the vinyl and share it around the internet. This
was Machina II, which still today feels like the furthest
idea of a sound that a rock band pushed the "rock
sound."

On the mainstream the 2000s was the commerciality of


the 90s. If the 90s was alcohol, the 2000s was the soft
drink version. Napster arrived. Apple undercut all
competitors by selling music for 99 cents, labels now
needing revenue from live acts, simple three piece
bands, pop up bands with a quick turnaround, bands
dropped from contracts before theyve even released
albums. It became a turnstile industry. Labels were
losing money and wanted bands that were simple that
could pop up do a show and move on to the next. The
more shows the better to score any revenue to
recuperate losses from file sharing audiences. Music
was now about the live act again. File sharing continued
and labels and studios lost more money. They began to
take audiences to court over file sharing. The Arctic
Monkeys after having amassed a large number of
followers on MySpace was the first time I heard of a
band being signed for their internet following. Bands
from emo to indie like Interpol and The Strokes dressing
like "suits" (in the same way that Nirvana spoofed in a
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famous photoshoot) whilst echoing 60s Beatles and 80s
bands like Madness. Perhaps they wore suits because
they just left work and jumped on stage, and their
audience just work and turned up to a gig, and it was a
way of being relatable to their audience. But culture is
an escape from work, and cultural icons have always
tried to restyle the conformism of fashion's traditions.
As the industry wore suits, for a rock band to dress in
suits was like dressing as the enemy - those that
curtailed artistic creativity. The idea of being an artist in
part so you didnt have a job where you have to wear a
suit. Razorlight and The Libertines in the army officer
regalia like the 70s bands. But the underground in the
2000s was full of ideas. It was all about production.
Supergroups like Fantomas who made Suspended
Animation in 2005 which remains a largely unheard
masterpiece. There were also groups like Dalek and
Death Grips in California that were making the kind of
hip-hop Kanye did with (2013) Yeezus as early as 2004.
Particularly in Daleks record called Absence on
Californias Ipecac label, and Death Grips album
Exmilitary. Id see Dalek play to crowds of maybe 200
people at most in preeminant clubs in the North of
England. We'd talk and Id ask them to do remixes of my
poetry but I couldn't afford it. They did collaborations
with 70s prog rockers Faust. Out of the file sharing
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wave, kids with laptops were posting music through
Myspace, Bandcamp and Soundcloud, playing in
basement clubs in the city with a laptop to about 100
people. Journalists were calling them
bedroom-producers and bedroom-musicians. Platforms
arose like Majestic Casual, a youtube Channel set up in
2011 in Berlin to share music laptop kids were making,
which exploded in 2012 to the point that the Youtube
channel released an album in 2015. It showed that a
platform really has a voice. To trust in the content, but
allow the liberty for its metamorphosis, but there was
the feeling of a collective spirit behind it that you're a
part of and that everyone understands when you talk
about it. Then major artists by the mid -2010s began to
recruit laptop artists for production - some like Tourist
winning a Grammy award. Once new music streaming
services arrived it meant that labels and platforms could
generate income from streaming and the platforms
collect advertising on streams.

Of course the end of advertising is to make money, its


largely been entwined with music artists came from the
1980s when big brands began to give artists
endorsement deals. As in the 1990s when there was no
difference between advertisement and art. a car advert
or a music video was as artistic as a feature film. Culture
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is now purely advertising. Now companies will collect
and sell your data to other companies so they can send
you advertisements tailored for you.

The old counter-culture and so-called subculture was


now mass produced. It proved even counter-culture
could be carbon copied, could be a cookie cutter
culture. Even for the well-dressed well-bred became
popular as they appealed to common aspirations and
anxieties: to be rich.

Similar to the 80s the rich are getting richer and the
poor are losing homes, unemployment rate rose higher,
public money spent on war instead of the public,
pensions not getting paid and the population age rising,
a time when we feel that technology changes the world
more than politics, resigned in to the current of
technological progress, a people who are jumping
through hoops to join the next big thing, who are
trainspotting life away because they can't keep up with
it, afraid of the future with no interest in the past, no
grasp of the world with no feeling of identity within it,
and loss of meaning in life. Voices that get lost and
forgotten on the stream
Everybody felt lost, and like the 1960s, was making it up
as they go along, protesting the same rights movements,
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to crack the tarmac street and disrupt the old
conformist views, to break the twitter stream and break
the internet. In the 1960s and 1970s the voiceless had a
centralised voice to express their anxieties. Now in an
era of user generated content and social media we can
all have a voice and we see that these deep and burning
anxieties are general anxieties that we all go through.
The task however is overcoming them not simply
expressing them. And that's the rarer and less relatable
thing, but nevertheless, the right and better thing.

After the financial crisis young people had less


disposable income, and during a time when everyone
steals music. Pop culture has always thrived on young
people having disposable income; being able to buy
records, go to gigs, buy clothes, books, and even drugs
included. I cant imagine how life feels for young people
growing up who were born after 2000. For me the 21st
Century is just a part of my life. For a lot of kids its all
they know and I think we deserve to give them a culture
they really benefit from. We are waiting for the world
to come up with crap so we can buy it. Because we
want something else and we expect the world we live in
to be significantly different in ten years time. Products
that have very little necessity to your life but they sell it
by saying soon every household in the world will have
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one of these products. They used to sell it by telling you
you wont impress a date without one. But disposable
products that each are designed to quickly need
replacing. An age when the present was disposable for
the next moment. A disillusioned generation in a
disposable world of disposable teens. Perhaps believing
the only escape is to be rich and buy everything that life
demands because you always have to buy the next new
thing or get left behind. Hiding from the world like bad
weather waiting for it to pass along.

Kids used to be kids and live for the day and not worry
about tomorrow and now they're asking what's going to
happen to the world. Kids are being told what theyre
future is like, and theyre scared of their uncertain
futures, and so they listen. The world is changing so
rapidly that people are making absurd hypothesis about
the future because they have as much absurd
understanding of the past. Theres no truth in forecasts
of the future if theres no grasp on the present. If
history shows anything is that technological, political,
social phenomena always throws predictions out of the
window. I want to tell kids not to be afraid of their
future. Kids feel overwhelmed and powerless to their
future so they fall in to place believing that it gives them
stability and control. Young people have indescribable
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pressure. Young people are scared of the future and
feel so powerless to the current of change in the world,
and yet all the demand from the world is more change,
as though the world were on rotation and they're just
calling out next!

Advertising controlled magazines supposed to give us


an eye to the world and understand it better but the
overload of headline click bait makes everyone more
jaded and confused about it. How many headlines
magazines saying How____ is changing the way we see
_____ just perpetuates the whole NEXT! culture.
Anyone who releases something in to culture needs to
put a Best Before End label on it.

The only way that media seems to have an authoritative


edge on a user generated culture is by having the voice
of the next bit of information. Media is now simply
trying to be the first one to tell you whats next. Instead
of building on the substance of present, just handing it
over for whats next. A stream culture will never be
better than a platform. Streams will always produce
disposable content. I know some people who want their
magazines to be archival platforms that last and people
keep like coffee tables books, but magazines are serial
publications and in their nature self-disposable.
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Superseded by their next issue. Similar to a newspaper
but a magazine can at least document a period of time
through a very personal lens which may at a later date
become archival if it was poignant to the era.

Everything had become the appearance of difference.


The alternative kids were really two thirds of society
were found commonly everywhere. An attainable
difference. What was needed was a platform that
recognised the genuinely exceptional. Unique and hard
to reach talent. That was lead by creativity and
intelligence that championed exceptional and rare
talent.

It's strange that given the opportunity of unmediated


self-expression, we've somehow managed to make the
most inauthentic culture, representing ourselves and
lives ingenuinely for as many people as possible for likes
and popularity. Complete priviledge of user generated
content and we fill the internet with cat videos.
Sometimes its hard to know how well youre doing
when someone puts up a cat video and it gets a millions
views too, FKA twigs. Between England and America,
countries with the greatest resume of modern popular
culture artists in the world, yet we make game shows to

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find new music artists. Reality TV stars showing you can
make a career out of just being a person.

We have a culture that can express freely without any


middlemen. Whats missing is the expression of
overcoming the explicit description of how we're feeling
- we have too many confessions of complaints and not
enough arguments for solutions. The heads above
water. An attitude of dealing with the reality of those
problems not only expressing them.

Our online profiles are our own personal TV networks.


of which brands pay our TV network for advertisement.
Instagram isn't a photoalbum or a portfolio, it's a
billboard. In a real sense we are all just billboards on
instagram posting images that look no different to
fashion billboards, or food photography you expect to
see in a magazine. The camera makes us all tourists of
our own lives, Susan Sontag. A diaristic culture that
reports incessantly on itself through vlogging, blogging,
instagram/snapchat stories, and twitter. Building brands
of ourselves like soda pop. We have turned into
Wharhol's Canned Soup. People are retail items. As
unique as an ISBN number. We live in a culture of
billboards of aggressive self-promotion, selling our
identities like energy drinks and cigarettes. I am
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Coca-Cola, I am Diet Pepsi, I am Persil Automatic, I am
Nike. Buy in to Brand Me. The currency is popularity.
Our only platforms are our lives. We become our own
TV networks. Success is measured by numbers, money
and data. Not on the impact on human conscience,
ideas, and feeling, culture. Everything is numbers. Even
the news driven by click bait headlines. Culture as pure
advertisement. Using these things to advertise our
'brand selves.' Instead of being vehicles for
self-expression its become vehicles to hide behind. To
be inauthentic and hide most of ourselves and only
project what we select to. Not reflecting how we feel
but we use it to conceal how we feel because we're so
afraid to be judged for how and what we are that we
make an inauthentic projected impression of ourselves.
Everyones lives are just an advertisement brochure for
lifestyle, marketing oneself like a billboard. We quote
ourselves on twitter. Commenting on our Facebook
lives like museum artefacts and gallery info boxes. We
create documentaries of our lives as vloggers and
instagram comedy sketches. Screaming for an identity.
In the biggest social connectivity culture has had we
become isolated behind phones and computer screens.
As global literacy actually increasing and with access to
the biggest library in the history of the world, accessible
to anyone with a smartphone, we nevertheless become
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more stupid, because wed rather spend time seeing
what Selena Gomez wore on the red carpet and work
on our dubsmash. We have the tools, its just how you
use them. And interesting things always arise when
using things other than the way they were originally
intended to be used.

The 60s-90s had generally been a voice of common


unrest. In a sense the culture of common anxieties, the
demanding impermanence, the ethos of making breaks
with the past, created Brexit and Trump as much as the
protests that followed. But expression of democratic
anxiety alone isnt enough without democratic
understanding and intelligence of those anxieties.

A democracy that simply expresses anxieties is not a


democracy its a reverse-tyranny. The anxieties towards
immigration that caused people to vote Brexit or Trump.
They might hear two sides, but they only have to
engage with one side: their own side, from their friends
and whatever sources they subscribe to. It revealed a
huge unspoken anxiety. Without having better
understanding of those anxieties and overcoming them.
The minority vote didnt matter. The minority is now
the counter-culture. Popularity failed. The individual
unrest was now under threat. A less than zero culture
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ruled, whilst plus one's were ostracised. The crowd
wanted to see themselves and culture had become a
house of mirrors. Brexit and Trump was a revealed
appearance of anxiety, naturally therefore, once voted
became regret. The anxiety was satisfied in the vote,
but not in the result. Our ages shows everybody has the
same anxieties, the current on social media testifies it,
but some people know how to deal with and overcome
them through seeking intelligent perspective and a
broader understanding.

The former punk magazines that represented the


counter-culture and the unrest of the unvoiced were
now in a user generated era of only the voice of
common anxieties and unrest but unserviceable for
individual unrest and understanding. Counter-culture
became general, and culture was generic
counter-culture. Themselves only an inevitable mass
voice by assembling the voiceless to the general, all too
general public. Even counter-culture became the norm,
to which the individual now rebelled. There was only
one way and everybody just followed the leader.
Special was defined by unmerited accomplishment:
Youthful beauty, inherited financial wealth, birth in to
high class, bestowed material wealth, race and gender.
This was approved by the crowd for its common and
28
general aspiration. The generations that created the
culture then proceed to call the generation that uses
them narcissists and sociopaths. The act of using
them in the way we do does reinforce certain
personality traits but its not their fault. The popularity
of anything in the culture signalled the appeal and
protest of general society. Whatever appealed to the
basest interest and its usual suspects, not what
challenged and pushed us above ourselves. Progress in
such a culture was impossible. The minority was now an
single individual up against both conservatism,
counter-culture, and corporate censorship.
Counter-culture was the current, and media and
corporations were eager for people to get on the next
wave.

Not what stood out and changed direction, no views


that you didnt want to see on your timeline stream, no
images the apps would ban you for, no views people
would unfollow you for, no posts that broke the stream,
everything had to flow in to the other. It was possible to
be different if that meant unspoken commonness,
unvoiced but any uncommon elevated opinion, that
really singled a person out as an individual was
distasteful. The crowd ruled. And ironically individual
expression only demonstrated the voice and power of
29
the many over the one. The less you stood out and the
commonly approved your expression, the wider it
appealed the better it was, the more popular you
became. But the stream not only flowed as one.
There were the unfollowed, the unashamed views,
views that were on their own stream. That didnt link to
other things but was its own timeline, its own need that
existed in different frame of time and desire, that was
able to break that current like a damming tree that fell
in to the river.

When I was a kid, I didnt know what I wanted to be. I


just got to be a kid. I got time to understand the world
and learn why to love it, therefore learn how to be able
to make a real contribution to it. I got to admire the
world and not be afraid of it and confused by it. I didnt
grow up always being told what my future would be like.
Except for Y2K and look how that turned out. You can
only contribute to what you love. I feel sorry for these
kids always being told how the world is. But if history
proves anything its that technological, political, social
phenomena throws all predictions out of the window.
Economists trying to sell you products by telling you
what the future is going to be like, political agenda of
overwhelming you so you feel further powerless. Dont
be afraid of your future. I was watching television
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growing up and would see programs from the 1950s to
the 1990s. Now despite the fact that its TV on demand
it seems we just get new television. But it was beneficial
to see other periods of culture. The surreal and
existential from The Twilight Zone, to Twin Peaks and
the X-Files. Surreal satires that were social
commentaries on reality through popular
entertainment such as The Simpsons and comedians of
the time who criticised with laughter. Middle and lower
class comedy show, upper class mystery detective
shows, The television talk show, well scripted human
touch of drama for young people. The format of culture
doesn't suit popular culture for the framework and the
architecture of it. The #tbt and #regram is a user
generated interception of the stream. #Latergram as
almost an apology for it not being so chronological.
Culture thats experienced purely chronologically is like
words in a conversation getting lost in the seconds of
the past. Revisiting things often help to uphold the spirit
of things. Re-Runs don't appear on stream sites. Instead
of re-runs its whole re-productions. The 21st century
rehashes older movies, television shows, foreign films
already released, and book adaptations, and as the
British comic book writer Alan Moore said "Hollywood
hasn't had a new idea in twenty years." Televisions
direct imitations of popular earlier shows. Scripted
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television shows replaced with reality television.
Although popular reality TV started with the Real World
in the 90s. It got a new purpose in The Simple Life,
Meet the Osbornes, Big Brother, The Newly Weds, The
Hills, to the Kardashians, and all the Made in Chelsea
variants. Game shows permeated the 90s famously
made a joke of in the Rage Against The Machine music
video for Sleep Now In The Fire. The more money
mentality of the 80s came right back.

There's a story of Johnny Depp when he was starring in


21 Jump Street that he saw a billboard with his face on
it. And he and a friend stopped the car, climbed up and
began to deface the image and paint over it. A security
guard appeared and told them to get lost. Depp's friend
said to the guard look its his face. And the guard looked
and Johnny and looked at the billboard and said "alright,
but hurry up." What could be more the antithesis of the
selfie age.

Everyone begins to look the same on instagram, and


similarly the strict dress code of clubs ruined the club
scene. The whole explosion of clubs was that it was this
collision of different cultures and costumes colliding
together creating something new. People who may not
ordinarily outside of clubs intermingle with each other.
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This doesnt work if you go in to a club and everyones
dressing the same and so probably comes from the
same demographic background.

Is this the inevitable fate of pop culture? Is this an error


or is this the apotheosis of pop culture? The 80s
cyberpunk that envisioned advertising everywhere,
came true, only its not on every thing, its in everyone.
Art and advertising so far that now art and the artist is
just advertising. So far that even music itself is made to
sound like the character the artist wants to project of
themselves. Just as an advertisement will put music
over the advert of their product to characterise it as fun.
Advertising meant that just as music had been used to
characterise products, musicians use music to promote
the character of the product of themselves. Becoming
actors of music. Selling themselves through music as
brands and products, the music serving only to
characterise the artist like an advertisement. A musician
making the music of the song sound characteristic of
the image they wanted to project, badass in this song,
have a broken heart in this one. The point in the past
was that music sounded contradictory to the feeling so
that you overcome the feeling. U2s Sunday Bloody
Sunday sounds fun but its about the Bloody Sunday
incident in Derry. 80s Hip Hop used music much the
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same. This is Wagnerian music now, it's music of
cinema, when a piece of music appears that shows us
how the person is feeling. We are just our own little TV
networks beaming out our own content. We even have
apps that will deploy it at regular scheduled moments.
Now in a user generated content, we get to decided
what we follow and what we don't. Steve Albini, the
record producer of Nirvana and R.E.M, said the great
thing about our time was that it killed the radio, now
nobody has to listen to music they dont want to. What
we don't want to see on our feed is what we unfollow.
We don't have the opportunity to make people
uncomfortable to shake up their comfortable little life
with a new and beautiful truth that is often disturbing
or to make topsy turvy the formality of normal and
expecting living because whatever you don't want to
see you can switch off. In a culture where there can be
no bad taste, there will only be bad taste. Because
everyone will only have one kind of taste, their own.
Taste which makes them comfortable, and taste which
sells products. A good culture is full of variety not
idealised perfection, it embraces both the ordinary and
out of ordinary, so culture is influenced by lots of
different directions that it may ordinarily reject. Not
only that but it also helps us understand things different
from ourselves. A culture that is purely what it wants,
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becomes antagonistic to anything it does not want.

The antagonists of culture are the people who get


unfollowed. They're the one's who are the electricity
between the points. They're the ones that are making
people uncomfortable. If you're not getting unfollowed,
you're not saying anything. Young people are getting
social disorders from feeling they need to be liked,
followed, popular, and companies are insisting that they
do it so they have an audience reach. And it's very
useful, but it's not right. If culture doesnt overlap you
only get what you want. As Glen Lutchford said that our
time does not facilitate for good photography.

Stream feeds as the equivalent to channel surfing.


Passive trend nostalgia as you scroll idly through
instagram like children counting blue cars from the back
seat on a motorway. The 21st century is an incredibly
exciting period but its a culture that is so scattered and
the means to express it so disposable.

The follow button has created new censorship. A


censorship of conscience. Anything that collides with
our conscience is unfollowed. We have a bureaucratic
culture of good conscience. Creating lanes and channels
separated and segmented. Daniel Day-Lewis said of
35
Martin Scorsese in a real must-watch interview on
Movies 101 Marty is a master, and I don't use that
word lightly there are very few of them and he's one of
them. And God knows why he remains unrecognised in
this country to which the interviewer responded "what
are you talking about? Marty is revered here" and
Daniel replied "well he's revered by everyone who
reveres him."

Cinema switched from the reluctant hero who found


they had to help because they had the qualities to help,
in to wall to wall superhero. Films of born or
self-created heroes of super human capabilities that
found a duty to save the world that had such a
dystopian problem that nothing other than a superhero
could save it. The reluctant every day hero gave the
view that one could have a job to do that wasnt just
their job. That they had an inner personal qualities that
could really make a contribution and impact on their
world. The man who assembles the worst sports team
imaginable from a bunch of raggamuffins and then goes
on to win the league because of their team spirit. A
whole theme of defying the odds. Not just the
superhero who shows up and says never fear, faceless
working people, this is a job for an implausibly superior
superbeing.
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I was listening to an interview with Tarantino before he
made Resevoir Dogs. He'd already written True
Romance and Natural Born Killers. But he couldn't get
past the readers, it was only when someone high up in
the studio read his work that things moved ahead.
Business relies on predicted certainty. If you send an
uncertain script, demo, book to an administrative level,
it's received by someone who is uncertain of their
future in that company and wants to look good to their
boss. It's uncertainty meets uncertainty, two negatives
together. But if an established success gets work infront
of that reader they'll pass it forward because it makes
them look good to their boss and attaches themselves
to something already successful. If you're an unknown
you go to the top, that person is already established,
worried about seeming old fashioned and eager to
attach themselves to something new and fresh, so they
get heard. It's not the priority of low level
administration to see the difference between good and
bad work, but certain and uncertain work. That's always
going to have a problem for creating new excitement in
culture. Whatever is uncertain is risky, but that's why
it's exciting. It's uncertain because it's taken a step
forward. The company isn't going to risk the rest of
their roster which they draw revenue from, for the sake
37
of one new thing, which might reduce a buying
audience elsewhere. The time and money to build a
new audience is not going to be appealing to a
company. The internet should be able to cut that out
and go directly to your audience. The only obstacle is
the censorship of the good conscience of culture, a
culture which itself doesn't want anything that it's not
used to. Now no one has to handle anything they can't.
They can cop out. A new censorship arrives. It doesn't
matter how independent the source is. The audience
becomes the BBFC. In the 90s you had Marilyn Manson
and boy bands on the same channel and both revered
by the station and the audience of popular culture.
What we have now is lanes of culture. Disturbing
images aren't disturbing to people who like disturbing
images. Cutesy images are not disturbing to people who
like cutesy images.

Whether anyone likes to admit it or not, pornography is


and has always been a part of popular culture. It's been
a part of the background since the 1960s but if there's
anywhere in popular culture where sex is dealt with
without beyond the censorship of taboo it's
pornography. Everywhere sex is conveyed still with the
Christian taboo. It holds the only place in culture where
its presented without taboo or moral censorship. In
38
almost all other places its positioned as though sexual
activity were a bad thing, a secretive shameful act, that
one ought to turn ones instincts away from. Outside of
pornography, it's perhaps only now in the instagram
age of female nipple censorship despite its censorship
being okay with derogatory images of women in
submissive poses leered over by chauvinistic men, and
being fine with the male nipple, that popular culture
has given sex a perfectly human and normal status.
After all every human on Earth was made through sex,
and it's something common enough that we are all
doing it. It's confusing when it's used provocatively
when it's as common as eating and breathing. The more
you portray it as taboo the more it feels taboo. The
pornographic accessibility has broken that taboo down.
Like some ancient Greek lewd comedy, a sexual sit-com,
no more sex depicited through the lens of Christian
taboo but through the lens of all good and healthy
cheerfulness. But where it's used as even for headline
click bait, it's odd to me that it gets the reaction it does.
It's as if sex is some secret that only a few people know
about. Sex is something we do like driving a car, or
buying groceries, it's a part of our lives. And although
pornography isn't the same sex you have with your
partner, it's where kids are now learning about sex
before having it - for better or worse. The mere use of it
39
as a selling point suggests that its still taboo. Ive never
quite understood the selling point, since it doesnt
involve the actual act of sex. Porn is a kind of joke
theatre. Sex is of course an altogether different thing.
Pornography discharges the libido and apostrophies
sexual urges. Sex gratifies them, and is transgressive, by
affirming the natural instincts. Whereas porn is
something to laugh at, at life with all cheerfulness, or it
would be reductive. Sex on the otherhand is affirming
of life-driving instincts. You cant confuse the two, but
there should be a place within culture for it because its
such an important part of life it shouldnt be treated
with taboo. It has always been a part of popular culture,
not because pop culture revolves around sex, but
because it revolves around high libido, which can
express itself also in energy of creativity.

One feminist ability via instagram. is that it allows


women to show how they like to look and feel sexy as
opposed to how a man likes to perceive women sexy.
The selfie has created that at least.

We have a culture where not only do we get what we


want all the time, its a culture where wherever we see
what we don't want, we get to eliminate it. Our culture
creates segregation because we can curate everything.
40
But good culture is variety. We end up creating a
stream where there are no interruptions. We only have
a culture which pleases us. Even to those who have a
sadistic pleasure of cyber bullying. Cyber bullies would
never say these things to their faces. They enjoy it
because they're unreachable. They can be cruel and
hurtful without ever fearing any repercussion. They can
make someone feel horrible and then go and eat a
sandwich.

We are all curators of our own content. To say


instagram is terrible is a misnomer, as its self curated,
it's that they're following content they don't like. But
given a user generated medium like Instagram and we
invent the most inauthentic place. Advertising and pop
culture have always gone hand in hand. As advertising
evolved pop culture evolved and vice versa.

The culture isnt bad, culture can never really be bad,


theres always some good in it. Its just the framework
of the architecture with which we uphold it which
allows us to experience it. Pop-culture at its best was
always an experiment, always stepping near to
avant-garde without ever stepping in to it. To be able to
look at the entire bulk of pop-culture is an advantage.
To be able to see it as one entire Golden Age. As one
41
giant experiment that perhaps eventually became too
formulaic and rationally devised. Too commercial that it
became commercials.

Michael Jackson had been doing the visual album in


the 90s for his Dangerous Album releasing nine short
films for the record. The 80s were doing "visual singles"
all the time. Pink Floyd made The Wall movie in 70s,
and The Beatles maybe first experimented with that in
A Hard Days Night. Plus it wasn't unpopular to do
because the big 80s blockbuster movies were using pop
soundtracks to their films, so when you saw a film you
heard pop and rock bands, compared to 21st Century
film which has returned back to the film score, with
obvious exceptions such as directors like Sofia Coppola.
Before Beyonce's visual album the end of 2013,
FKAtwigs had self-directed four videos to her four tracks
of her self-released EP1 in 2012.

Illustrators like Derek Hess who has done amazing work


in the 1990s was doing amazing work in the 2000s and
rock poster art was still thriving on the underground
circuit. I was a big fan of his and he gave me some good
advice Dont forget, James, wherever you go, you go
with you. There was an lo-fi 8-bit wave with Crystal
Castles, Postal Service, and Nuuro (eventually to
42
become Arca). The Dresden Dolls having still the best
feminist song of the century with The Perfect Fit. So
much that was exciting but it was under the radar.
Directors like Floria Sigismondi who made beautiful odd
videos for everyone from Christina Aguilera, to Sigur
Ros, to The White Stripes, to David Bowie.

1960s surf rock come back with bands like Beach House
and Best Coast fused with Velvet Underground and My
Bloody Valentine drones. Lana Del Rey as a kind orange
peel of the whole thing, an aesthetic homage to the
Golden Age, taking a slice from everywhere. Very
significant issues like Black Lives Matter, Feminism,
sexuality equality, and other issues which resemble the
1960s that felt to have underscored the era than
defined it.

A significant 21st century platform as a festival was Alex


Poot's creation and artistic direction of Manchester
International Festival between 2007-2015 where pop
culture and high-art was still intermixing, was still full of
fire and experiment, and where everything is a premier
and a project outside of the artists usual way of
working. And it was in my hometown and I would
volunteer with it working with Bjork, Wayne McGregor,

43
Anhoni, Robert Wilson and other artists making
incredible work in my city.

One artist who since the 1960s has been marrying


surrealism, high art and pop culture is theatre director
Robert Wilson. From Einstein on the Beach in 1976, to
his collaborations with William Burroughs and Tom
Waits in 1990, to Timerock with Lou Reed in 1997, to
the unrealised collaboration with David Bowie for 2000,
to the The Life & Death of Marina Abramovich in 2011,
(which I myself participated in working with) and much
more beyond and in between with adaptations of
Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Monteverdi, Euripides.
Wilson also collaborated with Lady Gaga for live VMA
performance in 2013. What pop culture icon has done
more for fashion in the 21st Century than Lady Gaga.
Kanye West and Lady Gaga are probably the only major
artists that arose after the 90s that are continuing the
ethos of 90s pop culture and yet still very much part of
the 21st century aftermath. Whats more of a brand
than Kanye West or Lady Gaga. Who more cares about
the art of music video, the staging of live performance,
music packaging, disdains the status celebrity, uses
interviews and performance to comment on world,
fuses high art with pop culture, not playing it safe
instead testing their limitations, loves being distasteful
44
in the mouth of media, and whos work is unafraid to
verge on the surreal than Kanye West. Yet that Kanye
made the Wolves music video a Balmain campaign is
both completely 90s and completely 21st Century that it
is far more a commercial than a music video that it is
actually an advertisement. Artist, art and advertising
now utterly indivisible. Theres a quote from Nietzsche
nothing popular was ever great. No one of Kanye
Wests first singles from an album reached the top 40. It
always takes a while. Great culture doesnt give you the
same taste you have in your mouth, so it takes a while
to get used to it. Great culture is like medicine, its good
for you but it kinda tastes bad. Advertising tried to
speed that up by giving us bubble gum flavoured
medicine. Eventually its just bubble gum, and that
sugars gonna rot your teeth.

I feel 2007-2017 is an era of itself. The world moves too


fast to be out in neat little organised decades anymore.
The minimalism of fashion photography and interior
design to the stylised and peculiar. From the birth of
Youtube, Twitter, Facebook to billion dollar companies
which many business rely upon. From small phones to
big phones. From the first iTunes to Apple Music. 2007
Radiohead used the internet for a pay what you want
plan within the file sharing era to Frank Ocean releasing
45
an album directly through Apple Music. And the
transition to acceptance of gay marriage and sexual
diversity in hip-hop. The Obama era to Trump. The
Financial Crisis to Brexit. And many other examples that
it was itself a little ten year pocket. But things arent
making the impact that they can have because theyre
scattered around millions of mini-networks and over
disposable streams, or appearing on platforms for click
bait headlines, but which doesnt allow for memorable
creative impact. Sometimes I think even the ability to
voice so easily means that the burning desire to say
something gets diffused before it reaches the art. As
great as it is, there was something about that the
artwork was the opportunity to say something that
meant it was just full of so much more. But if you get so
much out on Twitter first the work doesnt get stuffed
with the message. Everything seems to just drift from
one thing to next, nothing puts on the brakes or
changes gear. Once it happens on a stream its over - on
to the next thing with a resigned I cant believe youre
still talking about that - that was so March 24th.

46
There is another precursor outside of the music, politics,
and recovery after the economic depression: the art
and literary world. Popculture makes countless
references to Tracey Emin in the 2000s, Daimien Hirst
in the 1990s, Jean-Michael Basquit in the 1980s, Andy
Wharhol in the 1970s, the investment that the
American CIA put in to art is significant. Expressionism
was also a means the United States saw to show to the
world it's ideals of freedom, that even art could be this
free. The American government saw it was another way
to show Soviet territory that America was a kind of
paradise, and the way forward, beyond and away from
rigidity of their Constructionalism.

The 60s and 70s were hugely intellectually inspired


periods by writers and theories of art that they delved
in to beyond the turn of the 20th century. The creativity
of literature in the very tail end of modernists, and 19th
century philosophers and writers like Dostoevsky and
Nietzsche had significant influences on artists such as
David Bowie and Iggy Pop, as well as artists like
Duchamp and Picasso. German expressionist theatre
had been changing both stage and film to create how a
scene felt, not literally was, how it reflected the inner
47
state of mind. But if there's a movement that seemed
to have faded out and yet can be found in many ways
across the whole scope of popular culture's Golden Age,
it was the art movement of Surrealism.

In some sense Surrealism is the beginning of the


popular culture artist. The use of the concepts of
"subconscious" was more a necessary concept for a
changing of the guards, from modernist culture to pop
culture, rather than a concept in reality. The
unconscious was the suspicion of the truth behind
modern soberism from the 17th - 20th century. And it
was really what gave way to the 60s to be the event
that it was at all. Andre Breton and the Parisian artistic
intellectual culture scattered around Europe, kind of
created what became pop culture as much as the music
coming up out of the United States. It seemed to
disappear quietly, but Surrealism dipped it's toe in to
everything that was popular culture. The whole of the
Golden Age in a way was kind of an experiment, which
is what made it what it was. It didn't have a plan, and
the more it had a plan, the more formalised, the more
rational and sober, the more suited for certain business,
the less interesting and the less energy it had.
Popculture was always an avant-garde movement, at its
worst, a hell of a fun ride, connecting with people not
48
on a general level but on a universal level of big
questions that preoccupy us all.

The surrealism that began with Andre Breton in 1924 in


Paris, only it's not a representation of the unconscious
mind but that dreams are a way that we face the
concerns in our lives through mythical re-represenation.
When we dream, we are focusing on the concerns in
our own lives, imagined in a way that we can witness
them, as themselves, beautiful works of art, existing in
the imagination. Activated in dreams. And that great art
whether high or popular is essentially doing the same
thing.

There are those bad artists that enjoy pain and those
bad audiences, and those good artists that overcome it.
We want to depict ourselves as art to see ourselves. We
can see ourselves better often in art than in rational
explanation. Look at the Roman sculpture of Laocon
and his sons being eaten alive by giant snakes. The story
was the subject of a lost tragic play by Sophocles.

49
50
If there's anything exemplified in the Laocon sculpture
its strength within that ordeal. And the Romans would
have known the story and known he doesnt make it
out alive. So its not an image of victory but tragedy. But
what you see is strength in a beautiful artwork.
Although its follows none of the Archaic Greek
sculptural principles during the tragic period, what is
more Roman than strength in ordeal. It does this by a
fictional image crafted with the precision of reality,
cloaking reality with myth - which is not at all unlike the
surrealists. Much of what we think of Classical art is that
its about rationality which is a misunderstanding. Most
of the work are unreal images, taken from myth,
envisioned with the same precision of reality. Were
told that classical art is about rationalism, but in a way
its just as irrational as surrealism whenever its myth. It
might even be perfect surrealism. Tragic art is ugly
beautiful. It's recognising the terrible truths of the
nature of life and the terrible crisis, but painting it with
beauty so we can endure it. That was the same genius
of Shakespeare, Sophocles, Aeschylus and Homer.
There's no happy ending in these masques of tragedy.
Yet we come away from Shakespeare not filled with
gloom but full of exhilaration. Theres more similiarity
between our pop culture and ancient and Renaissance
art than in Neoclassicalism and modernism, which was
51
far too rational and sober to create surrealism or tragic
myth. There's no rosey-eyed glasses of romanticism,
the truth is ugly, nevertheless, life is beautiful. Didnt
Alexander McQueen say the same thing that he was
attracted to the grotesque and wanted to show that
something could be messy but also elegant. And how
many of the fashion shows with Simon and Joseph
Bennett were envisioned out of a dream vision. In fact it
was beautifully expressed by the name given to his
exhibition Savage Beauty.

Those who think that figurative art has no intelligent


substances compared to conceptuatl art, well the
difference was they artists like the Greek sculptures saw
no difference between intellectual pursuit and
superficial aesthetics. The famous Discuss Thrower for
example is not only a great figurative sculpture but
embodies the philosophy of the balance of opposites.
The taut arm at the back the limp arm at the front, the
bent leg and relaxed leg, the curled under toes and
curled back toes, the shape of the arm is as a bow and
the legs like a taut bow string. The intellect was
concealed within aesthetics. They Greeks knew the
intoxicating effect of aesthetics just as our so-called
superficial culture does today. But they saw it as a path
to access intelligence and wisdom - in a similar way to
52
how some people believe is accessible through drugs,
they saw that through art.

Conceptual art is that one cant see life with any clarity
so the artist sees it through impressions, distortions,
and concepts. Lies because he does not know how to
see the truth.

Conceptual artists dont want to believe or accept that


art is fundamentally superficial. Not to use that word in
a demeaning sense. Painting, sculpture, visual art is
aesthetic. Bottecelli, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Donatello
and Giotto were all superficial artists in a profound way.
All ideas were prior to the presence of pure aesthetics
of the object. The craftsmanship of the work, the
dreamed up imagination of the work, the meaning and
significance of the work, all resulting in the visual image
they manifested. This isnt much different even than
the surrealists of the twentieth century, who wanted to
access the subconscious mind and paint dreams. The
reason surrealists images are more warped and strange
is only a difference of the lack of myth - and perhaps a
clarity of their own imagination. Greek, Roman and
Renaissance art is perhaps perfect surrealism. Myth.
But conceptual artists felt that they wanted to make a
case for the ideas in art, so they wanted ideas to take
53
precedence. They placed ideas before aesthetics. They
thought in doing so they were making what was
superficial now deep. but its not even shallow.

Everything after Duchamp was a failure. You walk in to a


plastic essay. Conceptual art is a plastic essay. Im
probably not the only one whos tired of walking in to
these plastic essays. The superficial aspect of art - its
pure aesthetics - is the rush and awe of art. Perhaps an
artists does not get the effect from the viewer he wants,
and disdains not his craftsmanship but the medium for
failing him. He wanted to convey ideas. Then he should
write an essay. And how many times now we walk in
to art exhibitions and have to read so much, essay after
essay, often they even hand them out, so that we
understand this plant pot on a white stool in the middle
of the room and other ridiculous art. What is now called
Classical art is not about rational thinking and
proportions and that modern art is about irrationality.
Nonesense, and mere pandering to modern arts desire
to find its shallowness deep. Great art is superficial.
Great culture is superficial. Aesthetics takes precedent.
The so-called Classical artists were manifesting dreams
out of myth with the clarity and measured proportions
of real life - yet the basis of which were the most
irrational things, dreams. And the only place ideas had
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was in the purpose of the work and the craftsmanship
of its execution. Its only in the modern period that
artists failed to understand the profoundness of that
superficiality, or that they failed their own work to place
profoundness in it, or that it lacked an audience to find
profoundness in it. In any case, conceptual art and its
children were all failures of art, who in trying to become
deep were not even shallow. Whoever doesnt like
modern art, who take no pleasure in it, who hates the
idea that you have to now appreciate and understand
art, has every right to. They are themselves much
deeper and smarter than these artists. On the one hand
art is superficial and pure aesthetics the more perfect it
is, on the other hand it is born out of myth the more
perfect it is. Art that tries to be intelligent and deep is
not even shallow.

The unconventional. These are the people who see


themselves in the ugly beautiful. The different but
strong not weak. Unconventionally beautiful and
intelligent, as opposed to vacuous and obvious beauty.
For instance, Isamaya Frenchs work is neither diaristic
nor advertising, she's satiric, comic, and condescending
to the commonalities of the age. She uses them to
speak. Its something that is more frequently coming
out of the stylists now.
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The history of art is just a variety of communication.
My work is always about communicating Laurie
Anderson. For instance, in a contemporary sculpture
that has a man with an oversized arm or its designed to
have bits missing, the basis of that work is still in the
rational reality of a man that is then distorted. Surreal
and ancient art were both from the basis of dream
visions. And yet who would ever say that the 1990s was
on the verge of the Renaissance? But in the history of
culture, the only chunk of culture that was ever really
out of place was the 1600s to the 1900s. The rest fits
together quite nicely. Neoclassical architecture only
superficially tried to imitate classical architecture but
less so than Corbusier. Much of it was really facade.
Opera that only superficially tried to imitate Greek
Tragedy but less so than Robert Wilsons artpop opera.
The Greeks wouldnt have understood Opera and
laughed at Shakespeare. Im sure Baz Lurhmans Romeo
and Juliet, and Lawrence Oliviers Hamlet, were more
thrilling than a Victorian theatre experience. Theres no
way than any high culture was ever made without an
ecstasy in to high spirits and intoxication and thats
exactly what pop culture gave us. You cant passively
make Shakespeare. Hamlet at the crisis under some
universal spotlight, what is that but the rockstar on
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stage, the tragic anti-hero. Pop cultures media has
always been vocal about breaking with the past but the
culture itself has always been about making
connections. Connections between diverse and
seemingly estranged things.

From radio, to television, to festivals, to MTV, what


drives popular culture is collisions of otherwise
divergent forms. Every era of popular culture was
segmented by its political, social, technological,
economic shifts, and within that there had to be a stage,
with which to voice and express how it felt to live within
that. All popular culture is really made on the stage,
whether a theatre, screen, concert, or channel. There is
always a platform. Culture needs what its always
needed: platforms. Whether that is festivals or channels.
Not lanes, not steams, and not idealisations of
perfection - so that any young girl with a thin waist, big
bust, peachy butt, and a toothpaste commercial smile
can make a career out of instagram. But the stage to
allow for the metamorphosis of cultural variety on that
stage. Periods of culture are like cocoons, concentrated
periods of intensity that nevertheless undergo
metamorphosis. Divided and defined by their
technological, social, economic and political shifts. It

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cant be divided so neat and tidy as the decades of the
Gregorian calender. Life isnt so convenient as that.

Look at some of the most defining videos of the era -


Rihanna, Sia, Beyonce - have been people singing
through pain. Look how many more women are making
better videos than men. But they look how badass, and
full of strength. Not as a glamorisation of the terrible,
but as a lens through which we can handle the truth of
reality so we dont ignore it.

Literature is more the complimentary counterpart of


music, its never very good if it aims to do just the same
thing. The 1960s through the 2000s wanted to do with
literature (rather than for literature) what punk did for
music. Hunter Thompson, William Burroughs, Irvine
Welsh, Bret Easton Ellis, etc Controversial literature and
poetry that is full of swear words and draws illicit lewd
content doesnt do the job because it is just another
appearance of the world. Huge exterior lives of
characters with horrible interiors. Its just another
moral appearance of the world. Horrible things happen
but its not our reality. Horrible things make up a lot life,
but its getting past the appearance of the horrible in to
the universality of lifes pain. And I dont see why Id
spend time writing about the specific people I spend
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time trying to avoid in actual life. Okay, greedy
self-absorbed economists are not the nicest of people
and drugs dont equate well being - we get that.
Literature that lasts is literature that gets in to the heart
of us no matter what the costume of the world is. Its
about being able to say the truth without unbearable
explicitness because youll end up glamorising the truth
incidentally. To get someone to sit through two hours
of a film about a horrible thing you have to make it look
good and entertaining, and therefore you glamorise the
very thing youre trying to discredit. The Great Gatsby is
one example of a commonly misunderstood one.
Fitzgerald wrote it to be cynical about the growing
material decadence of America and yet what we
remember is wanting to attend Gatsbys wonderfully
extravagant parties. Outside of the Surrealist poets, the
major influence to surreal literature that took that
direction would be Marquez' One Years of Solitude,
Lorca's When Five Years Pass, Pirandello's Five Actors
Looking For A Director, and Kafka's Metamorphosis.
With science fiction also contributing. But writers like
Ovid and Homer are no less surrealists. In literature
we're much still in the age of American pulp fiction, the
English fantasy fable, and the modern social realist
novel. The surrealist novel is yet to be a part of culture.

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Nick Knight once said in an interview from a McQueen
shoot with antlers protruding from the models
shoulders, that when people criticised it he said "why
can people accept images in horror movies but have a
problem with it in photography. Film is twenty-four
frames per second, this is just one frame." In a horror
film people find it agreeable to find terrifying images
terrifying, but Nick Knight's images are beautiful. And
those people found it disagreeable to their own
conscience to find antler's protruding out of someone's
shoulders beautiful. Nick Knights work makes everyone
who feels, looks, are, and may be judged differently feel
OK and feel beautiful. We all feel our own pain and lifes
beauty at the same time.

From everything from David Bowie to Alexander


McQueen there is the ability to dream and take
something messy and make it elegant, to take the
possibly ugly and make it absolutely beautiful. I see that
same thing in SHOWstudio and I think England has
always been very good at that. I think Shakespeare was
very good at that. But also Andre Breton and the
Surrealists, those of Lorca and Dali also, were doing the
same, theatre directors like Robert Wilson, and music
video generally verged on the surreal. And I see
SHOWstudio as a great continuation of all that energy.
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If there was anything post 2001 that kept that energy
and creativity it was fashion. If there is anything since
2001, that is a platform that is curating culture it is
SHOWstudio. SHOWstudio still exists in a world of
dreams, whilst other platforms that look similiar are
putting it in reality. It is still just photography with them,
SHOWstudio seems to be image making. Not only does
SHOWstudio feel like what I loved about my MTV in
terms of cultural electricity, but also what I love about
the all the artists whether literary or visual of the
twentieth century.

Whether surrealism or myth it is an art as a way of


being able to say the truth without having to directly
look at the truth. A way to handle the truth at a safe
distance. It makes it creative instead of scientific. It
makes it creative, instead of explicit. The 90s revelled in
such dissonance. Yet good conscience culture follows
the trend of whatever else in in vogue. Unfollowed is
dissonance in culture. Despite all the technology in the
world, our time is very much the 1950s and 1980s
combined, which carried such a different cultural ethos
from the 60s, 70s, underground 80s, and 90s. Because
despite all its innovations, technology doesnt change
people. And pop culture is kind of a tussle between the

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two, where they married briefly in the 70s and 90s.
Which is perhaps why surrealism is again so relevant.

The 80s was so visual that the 90s was kind of a return
to what people felt like, but what they felt like within
the 80s visual world. The 90s had so many satirical
comedies. We knew ourselves again. We began to
understand the world and talk about how it felt to be in
that world, to ask big questions again, and dealt with
those issues on television. If filmmakers like Alejandro
Jaradowski and the opening of Fellini's 8 1/2 as more
art house cinema, then in popular cinema Stanley
Kubrick was the most symbolist and surrealist
filmmaker during the century. "The most important
parts of a film are the mysterious parts - beyond the
reach of reason and language" Stanley Kubrick. Like
every great piece of visual cinema it mixed symbolism
and surrealism with an existential concern. Even1990s
television in The X-Files, what made it so relatable was
the slogan The Truth Is Out There. To search for the
truth in a world that was so far removed from truth. We
could all relate to that. Every copy of that show that
was just about aliens and the supernatural no one could
connect with.

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Isamaya Ffrench, Nick knight, Harley Weir, FKAtwigs,
SHOWstudio in general (not to mention, though I mean
them, Rei Nadal, Marie Schuller, Ruth Hogben, Pavel
Brenner, Vincent Haycock, Tabitha Denholm to name
only a very few), and fashion designers too numerous to
mention - not that it defines the time, but theres
options to see a energy of a culture that there wasnt
before. A culture that seems more surreal that is also
more intelligent. And a new visual culture through
instagram has opened up a new surrealism, a satirical
and cynical take on ourselves and on censorship itself.
Not out of expressing and appeasing an anxiety but out
of an intellectual understanding of the world around us
and our own behaviour within it. Out of the decades of
political, social, and economic reality, it became almost
too much to bare with. Now were turning more to
satire and surrealism to be able to handle facing reality.
Out of a necessity to handle the truth with high spirits.

Too much explicit realism is making us all low spirited.


People want to feel they have power over their own
problems and power over their own life. The feeling
that they can overcome the problems in their lives, face
life. to have power over their obstacles. A part of that is
to see the world clearer; to be engaged with inspiring
people who make them feel they have power over their
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life; the feeling that life is bearable, endurable, and
enjoyable; the feeling that they are okay and great.
Fundamentally the feeling of power over their life even
in the irrationality and chaos of the modern world. And
take comfort in the uncertainty. Uncertainty excites
me, baby, who knows whats going to happen, lottery
or a car crash, or join a cult sings a lyric from Bjork. The
14th Century Japanese writer Yoshida Kenko had
remarked similar words in saying the most precious
thing in life is uncertainty.

Literature helps us momentarily stop and make sense of


everything and to assume the identity of that which can
make sense. Literature is form within the chaos. Music
is chaos out of the form. Music break apart and
literature puts together in a new way. Great writers
dont describe the time they live in, great writers
elevate the attitude of the time they live in. They help
people see the time and give expression to the spirit
and feeling of the age. And its only long afterwards that
the culture holds up their work as the way it wishes to
remember it. A generation of writers who said what
they see. Writers as Seers, as Thoreau had used the
word.

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The Golden Age of popular culture is over. Now popular
culture is no longer culture, its just popular. Whilst
Kinfolk-culture would appear as a reinstatement of that
1950s traditional values, the rockstar mentality and the
surrealist aesthetic lives on from the Golden Age of
popular culture. The electricity in culture now is who is
being unfollowed. And whoever walks unfollowed,
walks their own path. Maybe the better way to describe
the next phase will be unpopular culture. So unfollow
me, unsubscribe, and unlike me.

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